Now what's done that...?

Mostly I hate the slugs, next I dread the evil red peril beetle!

I'm with you there!

:-)

Great blog.
I've nominated for Pests, and I don't mean you, Mel. Lol.

I dread the devious vine weevils attacking heucheras !
Provado is the usual precaution taken.

Slugs!!!!!! My greatest pleasure in life at the moment is seeing them dead on my decking after they have ate the slug killer and tried to escape, serves them right I say, and in the bin they go!!!!

Great reminder to go and check for those Aphids, I forgot about those in this slug invasion.....

The lupins seem to have been the only victims of aphids this year, but my goodness, what a mess they made of them! I think the birds get most of the ones on the roses - I rarely have any trouble. I never even thought to check the lupins! they flowered ok, but then just collapsed.

Thanks , Terra! I hardly dare say that so far this year I seem to have missed out on vine weevils, in case they hear me!

Here in the NE of scotland we seem to suffer less with pests....well, what I really mean is it takes longer for them to get here...they do eventually make it. I've never seen a Lily Beetle for example. However, we don't have many ladybirds either, sadly. We do have 'plenty' slugs though and the scourge of the New Housing Estate is the Earwig, and boy do they enjoy living in my garden! I hate the beggars, they are virtually indestructible and I am overrun with them every late summer. It started just a couple of years ago and since then....pointless having dahlias, but they eat virtually everything. If there was a spray that would deal with them I would use it, but the only one I can find is Bug Clear which is extremely toxic stuff and that only works if you get a direct hit! I think you have the right attitude Melchi....relax and don't look to closely! :D

Bob Flowerdew on gqt said that the voles like strawberries.......

I've never seen a vole here, Pamg, but I have seen a family of little mice scurrying across the patio!

I bought a new small dahlia last week, Karen, covered in buds. It's nearly all gone! I know all the tips about upside down flowerpots full of straw. I have to say, if I grew a lot of dahlias, I would do that. I haven't really been bothered with earwigs till this year - at least, I'm assuming that's what the nibbles (great mouthfuls, actually!) are on various petals. Lily beetles are rather attractive things until you realise what they do. They are very difficult to squash because they have very hard shells, also they drop to the soil as soon as they sense any movement and burrow in really quickly. Their grubs are vile - they stick to stems and leaves and cover themselves with excrement!

Yeuch! Gross!

Totally! It took me a season before I could bring myself to deal with them.. Now I do it with kitchen roll!!

Slugs and snails never seen so many this year, as fast as I get rid of them another lot are waiting in the wings, sorry but it is death and destruction, you cannot open a garden that has been eaten to bits, there would be nothing to see lol lily beetle and also vine weevils are another problem, not to mentions squirrels, badgers and foxes, and we dont even live in the country!!

Great that you're so relaxed about the pests, Mel! We no longer grow Lilies, so don't see those pesky beetles any more; don't grow Hostas, so rarely see a slug; keep the strawberries growing in the greenhouse so that the birds can't get at them! But we have plenty of squirrels who dig holes in pots in the cold frame, and frequent visits from a pheasant who likes to bite the tops off some plants. There are definitely caterpillars chomping away at some plants, but then I'm so pleased when we see the butterflies and moths!

Interesting about the pheasant - there is a pair over the wall, and I always feel ridiculously flattered when one ventures into the garden - usually in Autumn. I only have the one hosta at the moment, in a pot, and those photographed are the only leaves that show any damage. I had quite a few because I love them, but they did suffer rather! But on the plus side, I have a great number of bees, butterflies, hoverflies, wasps, ladybirds, many varieties of birds, and there are hedgehogs and frogs - so I tolerate the pests. Somebody has to be at the bottom of the food chain!

I had been so chuffed (Scots for very happy) that the slug population seemed to be at a minimum earlier in the year. How very soon they disappointment sets in! They are hanging from the lupins like Christmas Tree baubles, having firstly devoured all the foliage. I had to cut back 6 large plants right to the ground yesterday.
I made a decission a few months ago after finding out that a family of hedgehogs are living nearby and installing the pond not to use slug pellet. Well that fell by the way side about 1 week ago.
Normally, when weeding the borders, I have a bucket of salt and a pair of old kitchen tongs with me and I drop them right into the salt with a short statement of....
take that you b****r!

Good for you, Scottish!

I hate the darn snails and have no qualms when getting rid of them, especially when I see my chomped plants, I haven`t seen a slug in years, guess my froggy friends sort them for me, no lily beetles this year as of yet, thank goodness, earwigs not spotted but I`m growing lots of Asters so I bet there will be, thats when hubby will panic, he hates them, nearly as bad as I am with moths, lol, I did get my lawns sorted this morning and I`ve been nipping out between showers since then deadheading my poor roses, you are so right, I always spot the ones I`ve missed after putting the pruners away....

Word spreads fast about a good restaurant lol
I throw the snails into the field at the back, but it's vine weevils I hate most. I've seem lots of very big ones this year. None of them survived !

I throw snails over the back wall as well, Hywel, onto the school field! Although I think they probably crawl back again!

I'm getting better with things in the garden, Lincslass, but I'm not keen on moths when I'm reading in bed! Fortunately, OH is much braver than i am!

I cannot be in the room if theres any moths or spiders, hubby works nights so I get in a right spin now when on my own, spiders I have to get the hoover out, I have been known to sleep on the couch through sheer desperation, lol...

Poor you - I sympathise Lincslass - but I can deal with spiders if they're not TOO big. The worst thing is when you go to get the brush and pan, come back and they've disappeared from sight . . . could be anywhere!! :(((

I think I'm growing out of my fear of spiders (well, if I haven't by now, I never will!) I used not to be able to stay in a room if I thought there might be one lurking. OH positively loves them though, and is more than happy to handle them. They don't worry me much now, though if I have to move one, I don't do it with my bare hands! I do remember that awful prickly feeling on the back of the neck, though, when a nasty might be around.

Do you know Mel, I wish I had taken a photo, but one particular morning after the rain, I went slug hunting on my allotment garden next door and there is a spot where we are allowed to tip our weeds. There was 3 big weed mounds , but you couldn't see the weeds for the slugs! It was , well, YUK! Needless to say, they are not there now. I don't usually use slug pellets , but this year I have had to! What I do now, is to put the pellets quite away from the flower borders as the slugs are drawn to them and this is working at the moment.

Horrid! We were staying at a friend's house in Surrey years ago, and one morning, the lawn was COVERED with huge slugs - you couldn't have walked from one side to the other without stepping on one!. It was really horrible. They were gross. I always think anything in huge numbers is alarming - do you remember when there were great numbers of ladybirds everywhere? The local bowling green turned red, and there were crowds of them on the curtains, and all over the place. I like ladybirds, but I didn't like that!

I can remember being in Hunstanton many years ago when our kids were little, it was a scorching hot day and suddenly there were ladybirds everywhere, I`d never seen anything like it before, the whole town was smothered, at first it was a novelty but that soon changed as you couldn`t get away from them, needless to say we left, that was a day to remember and I also didn`t like it..

Mmmm - it is a bit unnerving, to be honest! Apparently these swarms happen now and then - the last one seems to have been in 2009. When i was still at school, one of the ex-pupils a couple of years older than me came to talk to us abpout her VSO work in the Solomon Islands. She said the hardest thing was getting used to the insect life and the size of them! I really think that would have been enough to put me off!

I also remember the swarm of hoverflies , years ago and you couldn't go out your door because you were covered in them. That was definitely scary.

I don't remember that - sounds worse than ladybirds. I remember a couple of schoolgirls some years ago stopping by our gate and shuddering because there was a crowd of hoverflies around one of the roses by the door! I suppose at that age, I would have shuddered as well! But I certainly wouldn't fancy facing a storm of them!